Chapter 448: Hair-Thin Water Grass
Fu Baiwei and a dozen mutants stood on the top of the mountain above the water, their eyes fixed on the ship.
If Xia Xiaoman or anyone she knew wasn't on the ship, she would never let the ship leave. It wasn't that she couldn't do anything to Xia Xiaoman, but she couldn't do it...
After leaving Yunhai City, Xia Xiaoman and his companions breathed a sigh of relief. But before they could completely relax, they encountered many turbulent undercurrents. Xia Xiaoman and his companions did not dare to relax for a moment, and drove the boat carefully for five or six hours before they passed the area with more undercurrents.
Just after passing the undercurrent area, the ship suddenly shook. Looking through the searchlight on the bottom of the ship, they found that they had entered a lot of low mountains.
These low hills are covered by accumulated water, and nothing unusual can be seen from the water surface, but in fact the low hills are only a few meters away from the water surface, and some are even less than one meter.
In such shallow waters, the low hills may scrape the bottom of the boat when sailing through. Fortunately, these low hills are earthen hills without sharp rocks, so they will not easily scrape the bottom of the boat, but it is inevitable that there will be some bumps.
Sun Qing looked exhausted. "No wonder Mayor Yu offered such a high reward. We have only set out for the third day and we have encountered so many troubles. This is even more difficult than going to the West to obtain Buddhist scriptures."
Xia Xiaoman comforted him, "It's inevitable that you will lack some experience when you go out for the first time, but it will be fine after you go out a few more times."
Sun Qing sighed, "I don't know how Mingzhu is doing in the underground city. This is the first time she has been separated from Xiaojie for such a long time."
The first time Ye Xiaojie went out to explore the terrain, she was not sure what dangers there would be outside, so she left Zhao Mingzhu in the underground city to be looked after. When she was familiar with the procedures for going out, she would find a way to bring Zhao Mingzhu out as well.
Suddenly, the boat stopped. Xia Xiaoman looked around and found that everything was peaceful and there was no danger. Maodan also did not seem to be abnormal.
Xia Xiaoman walked closer to the cockpit and asked, "Why did you stop the boat?"
"Brother Xiao said that the searchlight captured something under the water and he wanted to fish it out to have a look, so he asked us to stop the boat."
Hearing this, Xia Xiaoman quickly walked to the stern and asked, "Xiao Zheyu, what are you doing?"
Xiao Zheyu had already put on his diving equipment, "Sister Xiaoman, why are you here? I was just about to go into the water."
"I remember it wasn't your turn to scout the terrain yet? Why did you go into the water?" Xia Xiaoman asked.
Xiao Zheyu smiled awkwardly and said, "I just saw some water plants in the water through the searchlight. I wanted to pick them up to see if I can eat them."
Xia Xiaoman said sternly: "Don't you want to live? There are dangers everywhere, and you just go into the water for a little food!"
Xiao Zheyu smiled playfully, "Sister Xiaoman, don't be angry yet. I observed for a long time and made sure that the water plants would not attack any living creatures, so I decided to go into the water. Don't worry, I'll just grab a handful of water plants and come up, it won't take long."
Xia Xiaoman said sternly, "No, water plants won't attack people, but other creatures in the water will. Who knows if there aren't other creatures lurking behind the water plants? Except for exploring the terrain, no one can go into the water casually."
Xiao Zheyu sighed, "Okay! Then can I use a fishing rod to catch water plants?"
"Where did you get the fishing rod?"
"If you have a wire hook, you have a fishing rod. I'll just get a wire hook and a rope later."
Xia Xiaoman shrugged when she heard what Xiao Zheyu said, "It's up to you, as long as you don't go into the water."
Upon hearing this, Xiao Zheyu took off his diving equipment, bent a piece of wire to make a hook, and then tied the hook to a rope and threw it into the water and pulled it back and forth.
Xiao Zheyu tried four or five times. Just when Xia Xiaoman was getting impatient and wanted someone to sail the boat away, Xiao Zheyu felt like he had hooked something and quickly pulled the rope up.
Xiao Zheyu caught a dark green object as thin as a hair. Xia Xiaoman looked at it carefully but didn't recognize what kind of waterweed it was.
"Didn't you say this thing might be edible? Why don't you try cooking some?" Xia Xiaoman looked at Xiao Zheyu.
Xiao Zheyu hesitated. He picked up the dark green object and smelled it. It smelled earthy. He pulled the water grass again and found that it was quite tough. He was much stronger now, so he pulled it twice but it didn't break.
"Sister Xiaoman, this is a good thing. Even if you can't eat it, it can be made into ropes. It's very tough. You can try it." As he said that, he handed the wet water grass in his hand to Xia Xiaoman.
Xia Xiaoman tried to pull it twice, and it took a lot of force to break it, showing that it was really tough. The main reason was that these water plants were thin enough, like hair, and could be used as sewing needles and threads, or for weaving items.
"What do you think? Sister Xiaoman, should we salvage more and bring them back to the dungeon?" Xiao Zheyu looked at Xia Xiaoman.
Xia Xiaoman shook her head. "No hurry, let's talk about it on the way back."
If these water plants are used properly, their value is no less than that of iron ore. Xia Xiaoman put the water plants into the space and then marked them on the route map to facilitate future searches.
…
In the next eight days, Xia Xiaoman and his companions encountered many strange animals and plants.
For example, there are giant catfish that make strange noises like the giant salamander, loaches with sharp teeth as fast as lightning that actively attack the fleet, milky white water plants that look like slugs, and parasites the size of earthworms that move in the water.
These creatures were both good and bad. Xia Xiaoman recorded them all in a notebook, planning to sort them out and hand them over to Yu Jie when he returned.
After eleven days, they finally arrived in Baicheng. After wandering around in Baicheng for three days, they finally found the mountain that Yu Jie mentioned was suspected to have iron ore.
"Xia Xiaoman, what should we do? Should we attack by force or use wits?" Xie Yi looked at the hilltop that was sticking out of the water in front of him.
There are hundreds of crocodiles of all sizes living on the mountain. All of them lie motionless on the mountain and sleep, almost blending into the mountain. If you don't look carefully, you can't see that there are crocodiles on the mountain.
When Xia Xiaoman found the hill, he wanted to have people approach it by boat immediately. But Maodan was very anxious, growling at the hill and baring his teeth in an attacking posture.
When Xia Xiaoman saw Maodan's actions, he realized that the mountain was dangerous, so he stopped the ship and observed carefully with a telescope. He found that the mountain was densely packed with crocodiles.
At first, she did not recognize these animals as crocodiles, as they looked a bit like lizards. After watching for a while, she saw two crocodiles fighting and performing the death roll, and then she was sure that these lizard-like creatures were crocodiles.
Xia Xiaoman and his team need to go up the mountain and use metal detectors to check whether there is iron ore in the mountain. They also need to dig out some iron ore and bring it back to complete the mission.
But there were so many crocodiles on the mountain that they were afraid they would be surrounded by them before they even got close.
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